Longview’s McCann Road bridge construction advancing despite setbacks

LONGVIEW, Texas (KLTV) - Work on the McCann Road bridge over the multi-use trail in Longview continues. And the construction has experienced several delays due to erosion and the bridge was built at the wrong height.

Longview Parks and Recreation Director Scott Caron says the McCann Bridge project must have an adjustment made by the contractor Leland Bradlee Construction.

“The bridge deck itself over the trail was poured a little bit too high. And so, when that happens and you tie the rest of the road in, you don’t want to have a big hump,” Caron said.

Vice-President of Leland Bradlee Construction Bradlee Smith says it came from the design plan.

“McCann road has an eight-inch standup curb, the plan called for a six-inch standup curb. So, when you put a six-inch standup curb on that bridge it raises it up two inches,” Smith said.

And that would cause the hump Caron talked about.

“Now we’ve got to engineer a plan where we’re going back a hundred foot on each side of the bridge and changing from an eight in curb to a six in curb,” Smith said.

“When the grades were shot somebody didn’t catch something and so we had to get it in correctly,” Caron said.

“And that’s a cost they’re expecting us as a contractor to endure,” Smith said.

Smith says it’s about 200 thousand dollars for the fix. The city says the contractor made the bridge too high. So, the latest delay is from reworking bridge approaches, other delays have been:

“Supply chain issues, getting concrete and forms and doing those kind of things. And then some of the soils weren’t where they needed to be. So there have been issues along the way that were out of anybody’s control,” Caron said.

Smith says the project and delays has used up about:

“Ninety-two percent of the contract,” Smith said.

And they still have the other side of the bridge to work on.

The southbound side should be finished in a few weeks and then traffic will be moved to that side of the bridge. They hope to have it all complete by summer. We have reached out to KSA, the firm who did the design work on the bridge, and have not yet heard back from them.

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